Mr. Speaker, those two words “do nothing” could characterize the former Liberal regime and what it did not do on this file.

Contrast that with the response from this government. Immediately when Justice O'Connor's report was made public, we accepted all 23 recommendations, which puts in place a far better system, one that the Liberals had presided over that was broken and unattended to.

We also said very clearly that we wanted to deal with the matter of Mr. Arar and the compensation. That discussion is going on this very week.

We have a better system in place now because we fixed the mess that they left behind.

Mr. Speaker, while we were pushing to get Maher Arar out of prison, pushing the RCMP for answers, and calling the Arar inquiry, the Minister of Public Safety and the Prime Minister were labelling Mr. Arar a terrorist, and still to this day have yet to apologize.

We now know the deputy to the Minister of Public Safety got the letter. The parliamentary secretary got the letter. The commissioner spoke to him about the letter, and in early November the minister knew it all.

Did the minister sit on this information and do nothing or was he muzzled? Is the Prime Minister the reason the commissioner was protected?

Mr. Speaker, a former Liberal, whom we all respect, used to stand in this chamber for some 40 years and say that he rejected the premise of the question.

I do not just reject the premise, I reject the method in which that member, every time he asks a question, first puts forward an absolute falsehood, and that is the kindest word I can use, and then proceeds with a question.

There is no quote anywhere where anyone on this side called Mr. Arar a terrorist. As a matter of fact, I asked this question when I was in opposition: “--one thing is clear: his basic rights have been violated. Why hasn't federal government demanded an apology from the Syrian government?” I also wanted to know why the government could let that man stay in jail for so long.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Minister of the Environment said that she will soon be announcing environmental programs that will involve public participation. Yet against her own officials' advice, her government slashed programs, such as EnerGuide, that were working.

Given that she herself created this program vacuum, will the Minister of the Environment acknowledge that her ideological stubbornness and rash actions have wasted a great deal of time and now force her to start back at square one by announcing new programs?

We saw that, under the Liberals, millions of dollars were wasted on programs that did not deliver tangible results. Even the Liberal Party's Kyoto program resulted in a 35% increase in greenhouse gas emissions. In that sense, most of those programs were ineffective. The government has targeted the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions with much more effective programs.

Mr. Speaker, the minister told the Senate Committee on the Environment that the government had not reviewed environmental programs. Yet the minister subsequently admitted that the Privy Council Office had conducted such an evaluation.

Will the minister agree that she could have avoided making such contradictory statements if, before abolishing the former programs, she had considered the evaluation her own officials had conducted, which concluded that the existing programs were effective?

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is mistaken. Yesterday, the minister told the committee that the former Liberal government had not analyzed all the climate change programs. This minister and her department have analyzed and evaluated the programs, which have been changed to make sure they are effective and produce real results, meaning a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. This was not done under the Liberals, because emissions went up. We will continue to take action.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Minister of the Environment said that industries will not be the only ones to make efforts in the fight against climate change, and that consumers will also have to do their share. In its economic statement, the government said we must ensure that no industry has to bear excessive costs.

Is the minister quietly preparing the ground before announcing to consumers that they will have to pay the share that she will not have the courage to demand from oil companies?

Mr. Speaker, the answer is an unqualified no. My hon. colleague has just replied to a series of questions from the Bloc Québécois. Let us be clear. The previous government put us in a situation where we were able to determine that nothing was working. Some programs were in place. We looked at them and realized that they also were not working. Therefore, we are going to take appropriate measures to make things work.

Mr. Speaker, does the approach used by the Minister of the Environment not illustrate yet again that she intends to once again favour her friends, the big oil companies, when a fair approach based on the polluter pays principle would require industries to fully assume the costs of the pollution that they create?

Mr. Speaker, as everyone knows, we need the Bloc Québécois' cooperation. It might be a good thing for our friends opposite to go and see their big brothers in Quebec City, and follow their example by demanding a clean air act.

This is what my colleague, the Minister of the Environnement, proposed. As for me, I am waiting for the Bloc Québécois to endorse and support this project.

Mr. Speaker, this country has incredible wealth, and yet the number of homeless people continues to increase. There are some 30,000 homeless people in Toronto and tens of thousands in Vancouver, Victoria, Gatineau, Montreal and other cities across Canada. The number of homeless people in the country is equivalent to the population of Windsor.

Why does the Prime Minister not declare a state of emergency, as the NDP has suggested, before there are more deaths on the streets of one of the richest countries in the world?

Mr. Speaker, we are aware of the problem of the homeless, and that is why one of the first things this government did was to extend a program for the homeless until March of next year by giving it a cash injection of $135 million.

We have even increased the grants to programs for the homeless by $37 million because our government is concerned about the challenges facing the homeless.

Mr. Speaker, the truth is that the government has closed its eyes to the growing situation of homelessness in this country. The groups that are out there trying to help people have been told that they will have not a penny after March.

The result is that the boards of directors are having to close down their operations now, when thousands of people are on the streets. This is absolutely callous. The government is wrapping it up in this Christmas wrapping that somehow it is going to come up with a new plan in the future. Meanwhile, people are dying on the streets of this city.

We call for the declaration of a state of emergency so that funds can flow immediately to the communities. It is a power that the government has and it should use it.

Mr. Speaker, obviously all Canadians are concerned about the challenges faced by people without adequate housing. Perhaps we could call for a state of rhetorical restraint on the part of that leader, who once accused the former prime minister of personally being responsible for killing people who died on the streets as a result of unfortunate circumstances.

We are acting, which is why we renewed $135 million in homeless programming through to the end of this fiscal year and increased it by $37 million. We are looking at yet further improvements to programming for the homeless.